How to re-arrange multiple buttons within a panel when panel/form is resized? - vb.net

Question

I have a vb.net form that has a panel. Inside the panel, there are 40 buttons dynamically created (see code below). If user wants to resize the form, the panel will resize, but the button layout will not change (i.e. 5 columns of buttons instead of 4 when the form expands horizontally. Is there any way to make the buttons automatically arrange, like when user make the form smaller, there are only 3, or 2, or 1 columns of buttons, and when the form is getting larger, the buttons will arrange to 5 or more columns?
Here is the code of the form, and what I have done so far:
Public Class Form1
Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As Object, e As EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
Dim a, b As Integer
For i = 0 To 40
Dim SampleButton As New Button With {
.Name = "Sample_Button" & "-" & i.ToString,
.Text = "Sample_Button" & "-" & i.ToString,
.Location = New Point(a, b),
.Font = New Font("Segoe UI", 11, FontStyle.Regular),
.Height = 50,
.Width = 180,
.FlatStyle = FlatStyle.Flat,
.TextAlign = ContentAlignment.MiddleCenter,
.Cursor = Cursors.Hand
}
a += SampleButton.Width + 10
If (a + SampleButton.Width) > Panel_MainMenu.Width Then
a = 10
b += SampleButton.Height + 10
End If
SampleButton.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(255, 232, 251, 232)
Panel_MainMenu.Controls.Add(SampleButton)
Next
End Sub
Private Sub Panel_MainMenu_Layout(sender As Object, e As LayoutEventArgs) Handles Panel_MainMenu.Layout
'For Each Controls In Panel_MainMenu.Controls
'Next
End Sub
End Class
What I have done:
Anchor Panel_MainMenu to top, left, right, and bottom (it helps resize the panel according to the size of the form, but not the buttons within it)
Panel_MainMenu.AutoScroll = True
Panel_MainMenu.AutoSize = False and Panel_MainMenu.AutoSizeMode = GrowOnly
I searched on Google on how to use Panel.Layout, but I have not figured out a way to parse the button layout to Panel.Layout to let them adjust accordingly.
I set Panel_MainMenu's minimum size to 776, 426
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading my post!

Answer 1

Simply change from using a Panel to a FlowLayoutPanel:
Represents a panel that dynamically lays out its contents horizontally
or vertically.
You will then not need to specify a Location for each button since this will be taken care of for you.
Anchor/Dock the FlowLayoutPanel so that it resizes with the form, then the buttons will automatically be arranged.